Growing Up a Tomboy

***Before you read, please note: This is my own personal experience, from my perspective. I am not trying to or do not intend to project myself or my experience on anyone else***


We all have that one female friend who is not a typical girl. They are stronger than the boys they know, can probably beat them in an arm wrestle and play a man's game better than a man. We all know that one girl who is known as one of the guys, that one friend that everyone thinks is gay but she isn't. We all know that one girl who loves playing and watching sports and wears jeans all the time. The girl who makes everyone's head turn when she actually walks into a room with a dress, heels, make up and hair done, because people aren't used to seeing her that way. The friend that everyone is surprised can not only walk in heels but can strut in them. If you're reading this and thinking, "I'm that girl" you are not alone, so am  I. We are the tomboys, we are the girls that don't act like girls so we fit into another category of females...The Tomboys.

I always knew what a tomboy was, and I always knew that I was one, but it was not until recently that I actually thought about what that word means to me and more importantly how it has affected me. How it has affected the woman I grew up to be and the way I view myself. So let's break this word down a little bit before we go any further. According to dictionary.com a tomboy is an energetic, sometimes boisterous girl whose behavior and pursuits,especially in games and sports, are considered more typical of boys than of girls. Meanwhile the urban dictionary has a plethora of definitions for the word tomboy, all of which have to do with a girl or woman being interested on things that are considered masculine or boyish. Some even talk about how tomboys dress like boys and have a hard time relating to "girly girls". These are things that I all possess, I am very much what someone would be and has been considered a tomboy.  However, I do not understand why I must to be put into a separate category of women just because my interests are considered more masculine than feminine, I didn't know hobbies, interests, and passions had genders.  A while ago I decided to stop calling myself a tomboy and I want to explain why. There are so many factors that go into this idea of being a tomboy and exploring what that word really means was a process of discovery for me. This term that I once viewed as empowering has affected the way I grew to view myself as a woman and the way others view me as well. From people trying to guess or figure out my sexuality to constantly being asked why I don't wear dresses more because my "legs are so nice". Leaving me questioning myself and thinking there was something wrong with the woman I am, or the girl I was. While it was something that I often took pride in, constantly being called a tomboy and questioned about who I am eventually made me question myself, my identity, and my womanhood. I cannot speak for all women who identify as tomboys but I will speak for myself when I say that eventually I got sick of being labeled something based on my appearance and interests. I always found it annoying that someone could look at me and automatically think they know who I am, or put me in a box and view me as nothing but that. It came to a point when people started to only describe me as a tomboy, I wasn't a girl I was a tomboy and I embraced that for the longest time until I finally decided, I wasn't and I'm not a tomboy I was just a girl who grew up to be just a woman. I am just as much of a woman as anyone else, and my hobbies or personal style, or personality should not take away from that.
I'm twenty five years old and I grew up in an era that was still very divided when it came to things  that boys and girls should do. Boys played sports and girls were cheerleaders and did ballet. That's just how it was. Boys didn't dance and if they did it was only hip hop or tap, any boys who did something outside of what was considered masculine were labeled feminine or flamboyant. It was the same for girls, growing up any girl who was into something other than dolls and dance or the things considered to be feminine was labeled a tomboy. If you were are a girl and would rather play basketball or football instead of being a cheerleader you were put into the box of tomboys. If you would rather wear t-shirts and jeans with sneakers instead of dresses and skirts you were thrown into the box of tomboys. The group of girls that most people assumed were gay and were in many ways considered less than a woman or a girl because of their interests and style of dress.  The girls that were always considered one of the guys, because they were into things that for some reason people only thought guys and men could do. I was one of those girls, I am one of those girls. I was in that box, and I grew up being both proud and ashamed of it. I know that sounds like a contradiction and it is, but it is also what lead to me eventually having an identity crisis and feeling like less of a woman because of who I am, how I dress, and the things I am interested in.

When it came to being a woman, I stopped thinking about gender norms. I never thought that I couldn't do something because I was I girl. I was told I couldn't do certain things because I was a girl. We are not born with these ideas of division, we learn them. We are all human, thats the one thing we have all in common, we all bleed red (and if you bleed another color you should probably go get that checked out because it can't be good),just because we have different sexual organs does not mean we are more or less capable than the next human. Just because I like sports and would rather wear ripped jeans or shorts and a tank top than a sundress does not make me less of a woman. That’s a hard truth that I came to this past year. I always thought that I wasn't woman or girl enough. All my life I’ve been called a tomboy and often told I act and dress like a boy . How I dressed was not how a woman dressed. I have to sit with my legs crossed, even if it’s uncomfortable, meanwhile men and boys can sit however they want as long as they are comfortable. I grew up thinking that being a woman was more about how I looked. It was an image. Women have to be pretty all the time, we have to have our hair done and nails polished, we have to look perfect, all the time. I'm not into the pretty things, I like manicures and pedicures, but I can care less if the paint on my nails start to chip, I'll go for a bun or an afro any day before a hairstyle that took hours to do (all day if you're a black girl with think curly hair). I can't say that this idea of the perfect woman has disappeared or vanished because it is still very present in today's society. We have to make sure that we act like a girl so people don't get he wrong idea. What does that even mean? The way I saw it, I am a female, being the only person I know how to be, how am I being less of a woman if I'm just being myself? Then I thought about what femininity actually is, and questioning what it is to be a woman, what does that actually mean? Is being a woman strictly based on my sexuality or my reproductive system? Is it the fact that I have breasts and period every month (which I could do without), because that's when most people say you become a woman? Is it the fact that my body has the ability to carry and bear a child, let's not forget, feed that child? Is being a woman having the natural ability to nurture? What is it? This is a question I have been asking myself for a while now, What does it mean to be a woman? What is femininity? When I think about it I honestly can’t tell you, because I haven't figured it all out, but it's definitely a journey discovering it. I'm not sure I will ever be able to define it in mere words. I do not think that being a woman is something to be defined only experienced by the woman herself. That's one of the reasons I started this blog, to figure out if we can really define being a woman or do we come to the understanding that there is not a set definition but instead every woman is different and everyone woman has her own experience and own journey to discovering womanhood. 

Up until about a year ago, if that, I always had a hard time calling myself a woman and identifying with the things that, by society's rules, would make me a woman. I’ve been called a tomboy, described as "butch" called a dyke by angry girls who for some reason thought I was hitting on them😒. Not because I was but for a couple of reasons, one because they already had preconceived notions about who they thought I was. Second they were afraid of being associated with someone like me, a person they thought was gay. Which presents a huge problem with how people view anyone of the LGBTQ+ community as “other”. One thing I’ve never been told is, I was feminine. No one has used that word to describe me, it's how some people tell me and my twin sister apart, she's the girly one and I'm the tomboy. She’s into make up and the "typical girly things". She loves being pampered and getting her hair done and having a manicure and pedicure regularly. She is, in the nicest way, a diva. I’m not.

So my question is, am I less of a woman because of this? For the longest time I sure did feel like it. I always felt like I wasn't good enough or I wasn't pretty enough the way I was. Girls are supposed to be pretty and cute, I was rough and athletic, and in my own experience I felt that meant that I wasn't pretty. How I started to view myself was altered by how people viewed me. So eventually I tried to force myself to be like the other girls, or like most girls. I started forcing myself to do the things a "normal" girl would do just to prove that, "Hey👋 I’m a girl too! I can do girly things." For so long the thought process I had was that the girl I was and the woman I had become wasn’t enough to be considered a real woman. I hard time calling myself a woman because according to what I was told women don’t do the things I do. Tomboys do. That’s why I stuck with tomboy for so long. It defined the disconnect I felt when it came to being a woman or feeling like a woman. It defined why I am the way I am, it gave me an explanation to give to people who tried to question my femininity. But it also made me think that I was less of a woman than my female peers. The ones who enjoy make up, wearing cute dresses, and heels on a daily basis. Compared to a girl who would rather buy a pair of adidas than Fenty make up. (Side note: I will definitely be getting my Fenty as soon as the stores stop running out of my shade.) A girl who is comfortable complimenting another woman on their beauty. A woman who would rather wear loafers to a party but is just as comfortable in six inch heels (It always baffles me when people are shocked that I can do things like walk in heels). So I started embracing the masculinity, but that confused me as well and would later throw me into an identity crisis that I have yet to talk about until now. Eventually I started putting myself in the box that other people had put me in all my life and living up to the ideas that I had to choose what type of woman I wanted to be. If I was a tomboy I could only act a certain way, dress a certain way, and I couldn't be as vulnerable as other women, because I still had to keep up that masculinity that I was so known for. Which also presents an issue with how masculinity is defined and viewed. I stopped calling myself a tomboy because I got tired to being stripped of my womanhood, by my self and by other people. I am a woman. Not a tomboy. A woman, and no one can take that from me.  

One of the biggest struggles of growing up a tomboy is I always felt I was fighting to prove my sexuality, or defend it from the people who made assumptions or insisted I was someone I was not. This has nothing to do with my sexuality. This is just who I am. I'm just being the only person I know how to be and for that I have to constantly fight to prove that I am a heterosexual woman. This introduces the idea that every woman who is considered a tomboy is a lesbian and every woman who is a typical "girly girl" is straight. Now we all know that this is not the case at all. This ideology planted in my head that any woman who was gay wasn’t really a woman, and that is something that I refuse to believe or acknowledge because it is simply not true. I just always found myself defending my sexuality and trying to prove that I was not gay while also questioning if I was gay. This back and forth of trying to figure out who I am led to an identity crisis of me listening to what other people said I was so much that it drowned out the voices in me telling me who I really am. If I'm going to tell this story I have to tell it with all the factors, so here we go. I grew up in a Christian household and also in an era that in general was not really accepting of gay people (I was born in '92 and gay marriage was legalized less than a decade ago). However my family always made it clear that if I was gay they would love me the same and not treat me any different. Many of them were on the fence when it came to my sexuality, so they made sure to let me know that I was loved and accepted. With that being said, I never identified with being gay, even though people started predicting I would be at the age of seven. I was introduced to this idea when I was seven years old because for some reason all people have to do is talk about a seven year olds sexual orientation when that seven year old doesn't even know what sexual orientation is yet. As I got older and more and more people began to think of me this way, in my mind I had to make a choice either I embrace it or I reject it completely. Consciously I rejected it; one reason being, my beliefs. All I was ever told was it was wrong I was not told why, or how to deal with it when you are faced with it. No one ever really talked about it, and I don’t know if it was because it made them uncomfortable or because they didn’t know what to say. The other reason being, I didn't want to prove them right. The people that always looked at me as something other than normal. I did not want to give anyone the benefit of the doubt and honestly because I didn't think I was gay. However, I subconsciously and unintentionally embraced this idea. So you can see where the identity confusion comes from. I was battling myself. Maybe if I just decided to be gay it would be easier, and maybe everyone will leave me alone about my clothes and how I dress and stop questioning why I never talk about the guys I like. So I started questioning myself and thinking that maybe everyone was right and maybe I should just accept it. I can’t get a boy to like me so maybe a girl will. Everyone thinks I’m gay anyway. Maybe I am meant to be a man. These were the thoughts going through my head around the age of fourteen and fifteen, that just maybe everyone was right about this tomboy thing. Maybe I get along with boys more because I'm more like them than I am like the girls, maybe I'm supposed to be with another woman. For me it was ultimately this idea that if you hear something about yourself enough, you eventually start to believe and become it, you start to think that if everyone is thinking the same thing about you then it must be true.  Now this isn’t where I come out and tell you all that I’m gay because I’m not. But why is it that no matter how many times I say it, it’s constantly questioned as if I don’t know who I am? I’m not going to lie either and tell you that I’ve never been physically attracted to a woman because I have, but it could never go pass an attraction, simply because I like men. The funny thing about this is, when people find out that I'm straight they start to question it. They try to convince me that I'm not, like "Are you sure?” “But you’re such a tomboy.” Like okay, what does that have to do with anything? I will always think of women as beautiful, because we are. Women are beautiful and I will never stop complimenting my fellow women, but that doesn’t make me gay, that makes me someone who appreciates beauty and has no problem pointing it out.

These are the reasons I stopped calling myself a tomboy, because I felt like there was more to me than just the way I dress or how people see me. It altered the way I viewed myself for so long, in a bad way. I’m not saying that I want to do away with the word completely or that I will never say it again. What I’m saying is that whether I’m a tomboy or not it doesn’t make me any less of a woman than anyone else. There is more to me than my exterior and the fact that I am a person of the female gender who enjoys doing things that are not considered for females. I will not change that, but I will offer to change the mindsets of people who think this way. I may not have all the answers when it comes to being a woman or have a clear definition of what it is, but I am on a journey to find out. I know that it is so much more than what rules and ideas have been put in place by society for women to obey. I'm not that girl, and I won't apologize for it. I might not be your typical woman or do the things that are considered feminine, I might not be a "normal" woman, but I am nonetheless, a woman and no one can take that form me. What even is normal anyway? I've learned that other people's opinions and perceptions of me do not define me or have the power to tell me who I am. I hold that power, and it's in my hands.


Articles


Why Can't We Just Let Girls Be Girls: Readers on the Term 'Tomboy' by Valeriya Safronova

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/19/style/let-girl-be-girls-readers-respond.html
A Short History of the Tomboy, by Elizabeth King 

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/01/tomboy/512258/
Why We Need to Stop Calling Girls Tomboys by JR Thorpe 

https://www.bustle.com/articles/180131-why-we-need-to-stop-calling-girls-tomboy

 

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